Folk Tales Every Child Should Know eBook

And when he went for the horse in the morning, he
found with him a beautiful white gelding, much more
handsome than any horse in the tribe. That night
the dun horse told the boy to take him again to the
place behind the big hill, and to come for him the
next morning; and when the boy went for him again,
he found with him a beautiful black gelding. And
so for ten nights, he left the horse among the hills,
and each morning he found a different coloured horse,
a bay, a roan, a gray, a blue, a spotted horse, and
all of them finer than any horses that the Pawnees
had ever had in their tribe before.

Now the boy was rich, and he married the beautiful
daughter of the Head Chief, and when he became older
he was made Head Chief himself. He had many children
by his beautiful wife, and one day when his oldest
boy died, he wrapped him in the spotted calf robe
and buried him in it. He always took good care
of his old grandmother, and kept her in his own lodge
until she died. The dun horse was never ridden
except at feasts, and when they were going to have
a doctors’ dance, but he was always led about
with the Chief wherever he went. The horse lived
in the village for many years, until he became very
old. And at last he died.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: From “Pawnee Hero Stories
and Folk Tales.” Copyright, 1890, by George
Bird Grinnell; published by Charles Scribner’s
Sons.]

XVII

THE GREEDY YOUNGSTER

Once upon a time there were five women who were in
a field reaping corn. None of them had any children,
but they were all wishing for a child. All at
once they found a big goose egg, almost as big as a
man’s head.

“I saw it first,” said one. “I
saw it just as soon as you did,” shouted another.
“But I’ll have it,” screamed the
third, “I saw it first of all.”

Thus they kept on quarrelling and fighting about the
egg, and they were very near tearing each other’s
hair. But at last they agreed that it should
belong to them all, and that they should sit on it
as the geese do and hatch a gosling. The first
woman sat on it for eight days, taking it very comfortably
and doing nothing at all, while the others had to
work hard both for their own and her living. One
of the women began to make some insinuations to her
about this.

“Well, I suppose you didn’t come out of
the egg either before you could chirp,” said
the woman who was on the egg, “But I think there
is something in this egg, for I fancy I can hear some
one inside grumbling every other moment: ‘Herring
and soup! Porridge and milk!’ You can come
and sit for eight days now, and then we will sit and
work in turn, all of us.”

So when the fifth in turn had sat for eight days,
she heard plainly some one inside the egg screeching
for “Herring and soup! Porridge and milk!”
And so she made a hole in it; but instead of a gosling
out came a baby, but it was awfully ugly, and had
a big head and a tiny little body. The first
thing it screamed out for, as soon as it put its head
outside the egg, was “Herring and soup!
Porridge and milk!” And so they called it “the
greedy youngster.”